Yem Sek-jin

Yem Sek-jin (died 1949) was a Japanese secret police chief in Korea during World War II. Yem was once a Korean independence fighter who fought against Japanese rule during the 1910s, but he was captured in 1911 and tortured into submission, working as a double agent for Japan and the resistance. Yem was tasked with destroying his former cause, and he was tried for war crimes in 1949. He was acquitted after the key witness died, only to be killed by former resistance members Ahn Okyun and Myung-woo.

Resistance fighter
Yem Sek-jin became a Korean independence fighter after Japan colonized his homeland, and he carried out terrorist attacks targeting the Imperial Japanese Army. In 1911, he attempted to murder Governor-General Terauchi Masatake and pro-Japanese businessman Kang In-guk with a bomb, but the bomb succeeded only in wounding the two men. Yem, disguised as a policeman, proceeded to shoot his way through several Imperial Japanese Army troops while running upstairs, where he planned to shoot the two men. However, he was wounded during this attempt, and the two men escaped. Yem was arrested, and he was tortured into submission, with his Japanese captors brainwashing him against his former allies. However, the legend of Yem claimed that he was the first person to escape from the central prison, and that he plugged his bullet hole wounds with his fingers as he escaped to Manchuria.

Double agent
By 1933, Yem would become a captain in one of the 30 resistance factions in Manchuria, but his comrades were unaware that he was secretly reporting to the Japanese. Soon, independence leader Kim Koo came doubt his loyalty, as Yem was the only person who knew that Kim Won-bong was staying at a hotel in Shanghai. Yem overheard Kim planning to test him by giving him a secretly unloaded pistol with which he could shoot him; when Kim confronted Yem and gave him the gun to "shoot him" to prove that he was a spy, Yem pulled the trigger on himself, manipulatively showing Kim that he was loyal to him. Yem would proceed to tell his Japanese handlers about an assassination plot against General Kawaguchi Mamoru and Kang In-guk, and he hired the contract killers Hawaii Pistol and The Buddy to take out the Korean resistance members Ahn Okyun, Chu Sang-ok, and Hwang Duk-sam, the would-be assassins. Later, Yem would accompany the Japanese soldiers as they accidentally shot Ahn's twin sister (and Kang's daughter) Mitsuko, mistaking her for Ahn, who was now a fugitive after attempting to kill the general and her father, Kang. Yem killed Hawaii Pistol and the Buddy after they sided with Ahn during her assassinations of Kang and Kawaguchi at the wedding of Kawaguchi's son to the late Mitsuko (whose identity Ahn had assumed).

For his services to Japan, Yem became the head of the Kempeitai secret police in Korea. After the end of World War II in 1945, Yem became a high-ranking South Korean policeman, and he was investigated for war crimes in 1949. He protested, reminding the commission of the fact that he was once a resistance fighter, and denying his guilt. The only witness to his guilt was found murdered, so the charges were dropped. Even so, he was cornered on the street by Ahn Okyun and his former subordinate, Myung-woo, who had survived Yem's attempt to kill him (while his partner Se-gwang had not). Yem was gunned down, and justice was served.